A decade into the 21st century, the world of books, the world of the arts, the world of criticism have all been caught up in violent, unpredictable change. A large part of this change has been unleashed by a continual stream of technological innovations that impact our daily lives and even our personal as well as professional relationships. Technology is changing how we read and what we read, is challenging the very forms and genres in which we write, and is making criticism and reflection more valuable and necessary than it's ever been.

Despite the many and continual changes reshaping the world of books and the arts, one factor remains constant: work by women writers is always assigned a marginal status in critical venues (except, of course, in venues that focus exclusively on work by women writers).

The CSZ aims to treat work by women as vital and central rather than marginal. What we see, what we talk about, and how we talk about it matters. Seeing, recognizing, and understanding is what makes the world we live in. And the world we live in is, itself, a sort of subduction zone writ large.